HAVING endeavoured to show how very inconsistent is the view of certain leading Evolutionists, that Archebiosis was limited to the earliest stage or stages of the prodigious period during which living things have flourished upon the Earth's surface; and also how irreconcilable such a notion is with the fact of the existence of multitudes of almost structureless organisms at the present day, let us now turn to a brief consideration of the evidence which is considered by many to prove the present occurrence of Archebiosis. In other words, let us consider the nature of the evidence which may go to assure the Evolutionist that he need postulate no arbitrary infringement of the 'uniformity of nature,' and that living matter, like other kinds of matter, comes into being by virtue of the same laws or molecular properties as suffice to regulate its growth. When Professor Huxley delivered his celebrated Inaugural Address before the British Association in 1870, by disregarding the consideration of adverse facts, and bringing to the front a long chain of evi dence on a subject which had only a very subordinate importance for the argument,* he did his best to convince the public that there was no evidence justifying a belief in the present occurrence of Archebiosis - and that, on the contrary, the doctrine "omne vivum ex vivo" was still, not only in the ascendant, but "victorious along the whole line." He showed, by what doubtless appeared to the majority of his audience a brilliantly conclusive chain of evidence, that the sole cause of putrefaction in certain experimental fluids was, as maintained by Pasteur, their unperceived contamination with atmospheric germs. Professor Huxley, however, fell into the error which M. Pasteur had previously committed he ascribed to the presence and influence of germs of Bacteria, phenomena which have now been shown to be producible, and actually produced in many instances, by the mere dead organic particles which the air contains in such abundance. Speaking of living Bacteria germs, Professor Huxley summed up by saying "Considering their lightness and the wide diffusion of the organisms which produce them, it is impossible to conceive that they should not be suspended in the atmosphere in myriads." Had Professor Huxley himself made some careful and discriminating experiments on this part of the subject, * See Nature, Sep. 22 and 29, 1870. |